Just as the Siesta Disappears, Hebrew Finally Has Its Own Word For It

It’s ironic. Just when the custom is on its way out, Hebrew finally has its own word for it. You can now call it a shnatz.

Shnatz, with its echoes of “snooze” and “snore,” is an acronym for shnat tzohorayim, “afternoon sleep,” known to much of the world as a siesta. Long part of Israeli culture, the siesta has gradually been disappearing from the local scene just as it has done elsewhere—and if you wonder how a custom that was long part of a culture could have had no name, the answer is that it had one, it just wasn’t a Hebrew one. For decades, the siesta was known to Israelis as the Schlafstunde, or shlafshtunde to de-Germanize its spelling, and many still call it that.

The shlafshtunde, though by no means universally observed, was once so common in Israel that there was no need to explain its rules to anyone. In the hours after lunchtime, you did not knock on people’s doors or ring their bells. You did not call them on the telephone. You did not talk loudly outside their windows. You did not play the piano or turn up the radio if you lived next-door to them—and if you needed to be reminded of this, signs were sometimes posted in front of homes and apartment buildings with notices like, “Do Not Disturb Your Neighbors’ Rest Between the Hours of 2 and 4.” Small stores and businesses regularly shut down for the duration, and children knew that it was not a time to play in the streets. Not a few municipalities, including Tel Aviv, had noise-level ordinances that applied equally to the shlafshtunde and the late hours of the night.